Redemption
by TimeTravel Fan
Summary: Harry was reluctant; he didn't want to bring HIM back to life, even if he wouldn't be the same. But he wanted them back and they promised him this would work. So he did the ritual. Future Slash.
1. Chapter 1

_**Redemption**_

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><p><em>Summary:<em>

Harry was reluctant; he didn't want to bring _HIM_ back to life, even if he wouldn't be the same. But he wanted _them_ back and they promised him this would work. So he did the ritual. Future Slash.

_Author Note:_

I tried to make everything as close to the canon as possible, but some things had to be changed so this story could make sense. I mean, there was a very distant possibility that Harry would have made the same decisions if he had the opportunity, but why should I risk it? After all, desperate persons make desperate decisions. And I had to justify the little change in his personality and chosen career, as well.

There aren't lots of changes, and the ones that I made had to be there and will be explained in the future chapters.

I promise I'll try to stay away from horrible things like OOC-ness and too much drama.

_Disclaimer:_

This is not mine, obviously.

_Warnings:_

Slash, some drama, some angst, a writer without a beta-reader...

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><p><strong><em>Redemption<em>**

_**Chapter 01: To change.**_

_March 21, 2005._

It was cold at night in the middle of the desert. Not that Bill noticed this under the mild warming charm he had cast minutes before leaving the camp site.

It was sometime around 2 in the morning and Bill Weasley was flying on his broom, heading to the apparition point outside the wards to finally go home. He had been working all day in a tomb and was almost dead on his feet, however that didn't mean that he was asleep enough for his curse-breaker sharpened awareness to dull to the point he wouldn't notice something weird when he got to the barrier.

When curse-breakers start working in new tombs or pyramids they flight all over the place setting up several wards with their co-workers to keep the muggles away and to prevent any thieving from wizards that don't work for Gringotts (the ones who worked for the goblins were intelligent enough to avoid even thinking about it); which meant that they usually found anything interesting there was to be found about the place and many, many kilometers surrounding it during those days.

That obviously didn't mean that they wouldn't find anything interesting later on. Sometimes the sand moved and surprising –and usually valuable- things were discovered.

Thus, when Bill noticed this strange _something_ a kilometer ahead of the barrier he did what any other curse-breaker would do, he headed straight to that place.

As he was getting closer he started to notice some things, namely: the thing was some sort of tomb-like cave that while barely visible from the other side of the sand dune it was really big up close, reaching almost two meters and half of height.

When he got there he checked from the safety of his broom several feet above the floor –who knew what kind of hexes those mad priest had put on the floor?- for the usual wards, curses and hexes that he knew would be surrounding the cavern like an indestructible dome of magic. Surprisingly the main ward that stopped him from going into this big, dark, fearsome cavern was one commonly used in those ancient times, it was so common that an old curse-breaker had invented a counter-curse almost one hundred years ago.

So even though he was tired his curiosity got the better of him and he started to cast all the correct counter-curses that had to be used before he could even think about getting into the cavern.

Half an hour later, already tired of hovering in the air while casting spells, he made sure –and rechecked soon after- that the floor was safe. Once completely certain that nothing would jump at him –or drag him under the sand- as soon as he put one finger in the sand, he landed.

It didn't take him much longer to deem the entrance of the cavern safe and to decide that he would investigate that night and not the following day. So he did what any self-respected curse-breaker with little or no appreciation for their life would do and entered the cave.

A couple of hours, several counter-curses, avoided hexes and swearing later, he found such an amazing room that all his suffering was forgotten.

It was a mayor discovery. It was unique.

And he couldn't let anyone else know that he had found something that could very well change the world as they knew it. Something like that would be more than dangerous in the wrong hands.

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><p><em>August 15, 2005<em>

The second person to come across that cave was Hermione Granger, and she didn't find it, Bill Weasley brought her there to show her his discovery.

"Oh my god, Bill…" she gasped, a translation charm on her eyes making possible for her to read the walls since she didn't know the ancient language; her eyes flying over the drawings so fast because of her excitement and fascination that she was having some problems processing all the information her brain keep receiving.

"I know. It's amazing" he nodded, and waited until she was finished with the walls to show her how his investigation was going so far, she would understand that way better than the hieroglyphs, at least that was in English.

"But Bill, this could…" she looked at him with such an astonished and hopeful look that he couldn't help but smile at her.

"I know" he said.

And even though he said he knew, she had to say it out loud to believe it. "Bill, this could change everything. This could change the world" she sounded as amazed as she looked.

"I know" he repeated.

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><p><em>January 1, 2006<em>

Harry was having a normal day. He woke up at some time between eight and nine in the morning, yawned, took a bath, made his breakfast and started eating it while he browsed through his recent paperwork, something he usually did to remember as much as possible so he could work faster.

Harry was currently investigating a really old Irish curse which was deemed 'unbreakable' hundreds of years ago, and he was just about to finish the calculations for the new spell that would work as a counter-curse.

He smiled into his cup of coffee, the healers were going to have a field day when he published this; they always seemed to enjoy the new discoveries, mostly because they were always proven wrong. It didn't matter how skeptical and disbelieving they were, his spells always ended up working perfectly fine, which meant that handfuls of people found a cure for their illness.

Lately the healers seemed a little less disbelieving when he introduced a new spell, especially since his name started to become a legend due to his new spells and cures rather than because of something he'd done as a child or because he had to kill someone to survive.

Harry shook his head to stop thinking about that and prepared himself another cup of coffee before getting to work, he wanted to finish this thing to finally take a holiday –per Hermione's insistence- after seven long years working nonstop to undo the damage that the war had caused. Never mind that the suggestion came from a very workaholic witch that usually spent even part of her Sundays at the Ministry.

He worked for several hours, only stopping to make himself more coffee, to fletch some cookies or some books he needed and to go to the bathroom.

When he was making the final calculations and doing some last minute minor changes to improve the spell he heard a noisy 'crack' followed by the well-known voice of his last best friend.

"Harry! Where are you! You won't believe what we found!" she nearly shouted while she ran from the living to his studio. "Ah, there you are!" she said happily when she got to the already open door of his workplace.

"Hello, Hermione," he greeted her, standing from behind his desk and meeting her half way to pull her on a very tight hug that she returned just as tightly. When they pulled apart he smiled openly at her. "What were you saying? What did you find?"

She linked his arm with hers and started pulling him towards the armchairs and the coffee table that rested in a corner of the room while talking a mile a minute about Egypt, Bill, walls and hieroglyphs.

Once they were seated she shoved a folder into his hands and started explaining everything while he read –or tried to- Hermione and Bill's research, smiling lightly at his friend's excitement.

His smile vanished and he froze when she said what was more important about the whole thing and almost became a statue when he read just that not only in his friends' calligraphy but also in those small Egyptian hieroglyphs.

"Harry?" Hermione asked worried when she noticed that he wasn't moving. "Are you alright?"

"This…" He shook his head. "This kind of thing isn't possible, Hermione." he said and almost tossed the folder away from him as if it burned, refraining only in the last moment and giving it to his friend instead. "This shite won't work, and I don't want anything to do with it" he spat and was just starting to stand up when her hand in his arm stopped him.

"But Harry, this is a great discovery, Bill and I have already translated most of it and it really looks like it's going to work!" she exclaimed, her eyes wide with surprise and disbelief at his friend outburst, she had thought he would be just as excited as her. "We need you to make this work, Harry" she said then, pleading at him with her eyes to help them.

"How are you even sure it's going to work? This thing has been hidden for centuries, Hermione, it has only been tried twice before and we don't even know if we can trust this shit. We won, Hermione, we lost lots of people... friends and family, but we won. And now I got you back. Why should we try to change it when it could get worse?" he shook his arm free and got away from the armchair and Hermione's hurt and betrayed expression.

"Because it could get better, Harry." Hermione stated, full of conviction. "The documents we found in the chamber say it worked, we have a whole chamber documenting step by step what happened, how it changed, how it was done the first time and how it was done the second time. You can see it in the pictures, Harry. I can even take you there if you want to see it in person. It worked. It will work. It has to." Hermione believed it would, she knew Bill believed it too, they had to believe it, it was the only way they could get everything they had lost back.

Harry didn't turn back, he kept looking at the portraits hanging from the only wall that wasn't full of bookshelves almost bursting with books and parchment. He didn't want to believe it, he didn't want to feel hope just for it to be crushed once again when nothing happen, because nothing would happen. He had already tried everything, from time turners to dark spells. Nothing worked. Nothing could take you back enough. Nothing could change what happened or make someone come back from the dead.

He shook his head. "No, Hermione. This won't work." He finally turned and looked at his friend in the eye "They are dead." He said harshly "And they won't come back, no matter what we do, no matter how much we pray none of them will come back. Not Ginny, nor Ron. Not Fleur. Not Remus, not Tonks..." The list was too long to even try to tell all the names, and Harry knew he wouldn't be able to talk about that much longer without his voice breaking.

"Please, Harry" Hermione begged, Harry had to help them, he was the only one who could. "We need your help." She tried again, but Harry wouldn't budge.

Harry shook his head again. "No. I can't, Hermione. I'm sorry, but I can't do it" he said.

He opened his arms, gesturing at the bookcases, the old and deteriorated rolls of parchment, the carefully placed birch bark documents, the barely standing palm leaf manuscripts, everything that covered the room from floor to ceiling. "I'm doing all I can with what I have. I tried everything, Hermione, everything…" his voice was hoarse and he felt a lump in his throat. He took a deep breath and tried to calm down, he knew he had a better grip of his feelings than that.

Hermione shook her head, still hurt for his friend's reluctance to help them, but understanding what he was trying to convey. And he was right, they didn't have any right to reopen Harry's old wounds, not when she still remembered what her friend had told her when she woke up and wondered where she was and what had happened.

The war had left lots of injured, both physically and mentally, but one of the worst was the people who had gone crazy after being under the cruciatus curse for way too long. That people didn't get better, as there was no cure for that kind of mental illness.

Hermione had been one of those unfortunate people.

And Harry would do anything for one of the few friends that had survived the war. So instead of going to the academy and study to become an auror, he had decided to let others deal with getting the rogue Death Eathers and become a researcher.

It hadn't started as that, of course not. At the beginning, the first days after the end of the war had been full of sorrow, guilt and regrets for him, so he had looked for a way to change things. It had started as a research about his Hollows, but when they failed to give him an answer he had tried to look for other things. Time turners, spells to go back in time, rituals, dark spells to bring the dead back permanently –as opposed to what the ring did-.

Nothing had worked.

Nothing had given him what he wanted.

So he had turned from trying to get back what he had once had, to getting back what he still could. It had taken a lot of study, and she was still amazed when she saw him sitting for hours on end surrounded by old and new books, learning and creating new wonderful things with what he had learnt while she had been lost in her own world of madness and what he keep learning every day.

She hadn't suffered as much as he had, despite her long exposure to the crucio and her short stay in madness land, because when he brought her back to sanity she had gotten her parents back after he designed the cure for the obliviate and even most important, she had Harry.

It wasn't enough, though. She still missed Ron, Ginny and the other Weasleys; she missed people from the order, and relatives that had died in a Death Eater attack.

Right now, however, she had a friend alive that needed comfort.

Maybe with time, if they let him think about it, Harry would change his mind.

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><p><em>January 2, 2006. 2am.<em>

Harry woke up screaming after way too real nightmares, his heart beating furiously in his chest and his lungs aching for air.

It took him a while to calm down but he didn't try to sleep again after that, he knew from past experiences that he wouldn't be able to sleep anymore that night.

With nothing else to do in his room besides looking at his ceiling and thinking he got up and went to his studio to finally finish the work he had left abandoned after Hermione's visit, obviously not before a short detour to the kitchen to grab some coffee.

Around five thirty he had the final designs of the spell ready and couldn't do anything else about it without someone else there to help him if the thing didn't work and decided to blow everything up –he had learned the need of a witness and helper early on, after nearly losing his left arm thanks to one of his first creations gone wrong-.

He entertained himself for another hour finishing a book about the Celts and spent another halt an hour tidying up his studio for the first time in three months.

This left him with nothing else to do other than look at the folder he had been trying to ignore since he had entered the room.

It took him twenty minutes to finally gather enough courage to grab the folder that was on his coffee table.

This time he tried to stay calm enough to read all the papers, see all the pictures, reread the research and think things through.

He couldn't deny that a little part of him still hoped there was something out there that would fix their messed up world and leave it as it once was, just like when he was an innocent eleven years old full of wonder for this new world that had so many amazing people in it.

Harry sighed, resigned to the fact that this idea would never leave his mind again unless he checked that it wouldn't work.

He swore out loud at Bill, because it was his fault and he shouldn't have to deal with something like this, not years after giving up. Then he gathered the papers and pictures once again in the folder and went to his bedroom to prepare himself for a really long day.

_January 2, 2006. 10 am._

Bill's flat, Alexandria, Egypt.

Harry apparated Hermione and himself in Bill's flat without invitation or previous notice to the owner.

Bill, who had been making some coffee and something to eat, let out a shriek –a very manly one, mind you- when he heard the noise of the apparition and reacted on instinct turning around with his wand raised.

Harry smirked and raised both hands. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you" he said, and all of them knew he was lying; Harry was just taking a little revenge for having to go through this again.

Bill let out a sigh and lowered his wand.

"Don't do that again or the next time I will hex you with something really nasty" he warned Harry, just before he asked both of them "Would you like some coffee?"

"Yes, thank you, Bill, I would really appreciate a coffee. It's 8 am in London and Harry here didn't let me have breakfast" Hermione smiled a little at the wonderful smell of coffee and fresh croissants, Fleur had really changed Bill's world. She smiled a little more thinking that maybe the ritual would work and Fleur would be back to change Bill even more.

"Thank you, Bill, some coffee would be nice" Harry replied with a slightly more pleasant smile.

He sat on one of the chairs in the dining room and opened the folder to arrange the parchment and pictures in an ordered mess, just as he did when he was working, barely leaving enough empty space for breakfast, ignoring Hermione and Bill's amused looks.

Moments later his friends joined him on the table with cups of coffee and croissants.

"I already read all this, twice, but I there are some things that I didn't understand so I'd like to hear everything you know about this and if you found something else about it besides what is written here" explained Harry after taking a sip of coffee.

"Did you read the hieroglyphs in the pictures as well?" Bill asked and the younger man shook his head.

"I did, but your pictures are not that clear and the order is a bit messed up" Harry answered before making appear a pen and notebook all the way from his desk in his own apartment.

"Well," Bill smirked at Hermione and she smiled back at him as if sharing a private joke "as you know, in the Ancient Egypt witches and wizards lived with muggles without problem."

"Oh, come on, Bill! You know I already know all that shit" Harry said looking incredulously at his friend for the introduction, making Bill mock-frown at him.

"You said you wanted every little detail, so you will have them. Now shut up and let me finish" Bill said, sounding vaguely amused. "As I was saying, in the Ancient Egypt, they had managed to live in peace. You won't find a single history book that mentions a dark lord or someone like that in that time, but this walls" he tapped the photographs of the chamber with his fingers "say something else".

Harry leaned in, more interested than before, he had read them, of course, but the pictures weren't the best and sometimes he wasn't sure he understood what he was seeing, so it was nice to hear it from an expert.

"According to this, there was a necromancer who defied the will of the gods and broke lots of important rules. Powerful witches and wizards tried to trap him, to kill him, but nothing worked and as the years passed, they started fearing a war. The priests began to design something that would stop the necromancer and, after a few years, they managed to create this." Bill waved his wand and several papyruses came flying from some other room. He took one and rolled it open on the table, showing a ritual circle with lots of notes on the sides, the same circle that could be seen in one of the pictures.

Bill gave Harry the time to reread the circle and read the little notes for the first time before continuing.

"They thought that if they could not kill him, and if they could not trap him or outsmart him, they could – and should – stop everything before it started. So they designed a spell that would take the desired person out of their timeline to bring it to the time of the summoning. If the ritual is completed a change presents itself in the current reality, since the original timeline rearranges itself and continues to the current date without the person summoned."

Harry, who had thought that the spell just managed to summon the desired person just enough for someone to kill or alter that person enough to change his mind and then send it back to his own time, stared at Bill frozen and then looked at Hermione, almost hoping that one of them would said it was some kind of joke or that they had discovered something else later on.

"Wait, hold on, are you saying that… if we take Riddle before everything started… as he wasn't there to kill my parents or some other people, they would be alive?" if Harry had had trouble believing in that ritual before, now he was completely skeptic.

Bill's face lit up as it hadn't in a while when he grinned. "Not only that, Fleur, Ron, Ginny, Fred, and everyone else who was killed in the wars will be alive again… Even my uncles, who died in the first war!"

And if Harry had been skeptical before, now he was completely unbelieving. Something like that wasn't supposed to happen, wasn't supposed to even exist.

Hermione, more attuned to Harry's expressions, noted Harry' skepticism, and made it known to Bill with a simple look. His grin dimmed a little while took another papyrus and unrolled it over the first one.

"The second…" Hermione started explaining however she didn't even get to finish the sentence because Harry had raised his hands to stop her.

"Wait, I want some answers before we go to the second part" Harry said, after writing something in his notebook. "You said if the ritual is completed… what happens if it is not? And what happens with the summoned person? What happens to the casters?" He asked in a rapid succession.

"If the ritual it is not completed the casters could have their magic backfiring on them and killing them, or they could be completely drained for a few weeks, either way the summoned is brought back to his original time and probably won't remember that anything happened." Hermione paused to let Harry write everything down. "If the ritual is completed, the summoned person stays in the time of the summoning and lives from then on as he would in his own timeline."

Hermione paused, this time to take a deep breath to prepare herself, giving Harry the time to do the same.

"No one but the casters will remember what happened in the original timeline. As the timeline rearranges itself to go on without the summoned person, all the people from then on will keep their own memories and won't remember what could have happened to them, what really did happened to them. The problem was that the casters couldn't integrate with that new society because their memories were from the other time and their mind couldn't completely grasp the changes and assimilate them. Everyone thought them crazy because of the stories they keep telling."

"Which would be a normal reaction" Harry added after a pause. "I can't imagine how it would be to see people who you thought dead and buried, alive and saying they were alive the whole time. I would end up in St. Mungos, asking for a mind healer myself".

Hermione nodded to show that she thought the same before continuing, letting Bill drink his coffee before it got cold.

"To prevent this, the second time the ritual was performed the priests made a spell that they would fire themselves to share their mind and memories with their other selves, the ones who 'lived' in the rearranged timeline. Because even if the casters didn't remember it, they had been living with the 'dead' and other people all the time".

Harry nodded; it would make sense to create a spell like that before doing the ritual for the second time, they wouldn't want to repeat their mistakes, or someone else mistakes.

"The second time the ritual was done everyone was able to keep living their lives as if nothing had happened because the casters remembered everything as if they had lived it." she finished.

"And the summoned?" Harry asked.

"The first time he was cursed by the priests, in revenge for everything the summoned would have done if left alone. The second time the summoned was forced to become an apprentice to one of the priests, as a way to 'reform' him." Bill said, tapping with his index finger the picture where that part was told.

"Did it work?" He asked, wondering what _he_ would choose if he had to do the ritual.

"The first time everything worked pretty well, the summoned died under the curse, so he couldn't change his mind or do something else that could waste all the work of the priests. The second time everything was going alright until one of the priest discovered that her sister was dead in the rearranged time because she had been killed by another wizard accidentally; it says in the walls that in the original time that hadn't happened but it doesn't say why it hadn't. The priest went mad and thinking that it was the fault of the summoned, he killed him and the priest who had tried to protect him". Bill finished and took a sip of tea.

"So if, and I'm saying _if_, we do this, what are we going to do with Riddle? We can't know for sure he won't go back to his old path…" Harry trailed off.

"We kill him" Said Bill without batting an eyelash at the idea of killing someone in cold blood.

"Bill!" Hermione gasped horrified, they hadn't discussed what they would do with Riddle once they finished the ritual, but she would never kill someone if she could help it and she knew that Harry wouldn't either.

Harry sneered briefly at that almost emotionless answer that Bill would have never said if he had not been in the war, that's what war had done to the good people, turn them into cold bastards, barely different than the bad people.

"And that's it? We just summon him, kill him and go on with our lives?" Harry said glaring at Bill for even suggesting it.

Bill frowned "And what do you want to do? Leave that murder alive to kill them all again?" Bill bit out grimly.

"No…" He wasn't sure what he wanted to do with Riddle either. Let him alive would be a risk he didn't want to take but if the ritual was right and they brought an innocent version of Riddle –if that even existed- he knew it wouldn't be right to kill him. Harry tsked at his indecision and decided that it was a discussion for another time.

"What about the possible changes that the ritual will create? The second time they didn't have a problem adapting to the changes but how much did they change and how much are _we_ going to change by doing this?" Harry asked taping at his notebook with his pen in a nervous gesture that had become pretty common for him, as he always did it when he was thinking about something that was too advanced.

Hermione's eyes widened and she couldn't believe that something like that had never occurred to her.

"What do you mean?" Bill asked, not understanding what the problem that was so obvious for Harry and now Hermione too.

"I'm talking about how many years are going to be rearranged. The second time they did the ritual, how many years were rearranged?" He asked with a frown, writing something else in his notebook.

"I think… they rearranged between five and ten years" Bill said, understanding showing in his face. "But we won't rearrange five or ten years, we are going to rearrange seventy or eighty years".

The three stayed silent for a while, all of them thinking the same: Was that too much risk? Were they making a mistake playing with the time so recklessly?

"The casters didn't have trouble fitting in because they hadn't changed much." Harry broke the silence after a couple of minutes, tearing his gaze away from Bill's face to study what he had written in his notebook. "We should make a list of possible changes and then decide if we will be able to stand it or not." Harry said and Bill and Hermione nodded.

"We should also look up who died since Riddle's birth, when and why. Probably most of them will be alive" Hermione added, seeing how Harry wrote 'People who will be alive: My parents (?); Sirius; …' and the list keep going on and on. And she didn't have the heart to stop him and tell him that they should do it following a timeline, reading old newspapers or Death Certificates. _At least not now_, she thought after reading Ron's name under Ginny's and most of the Weasleys'.

* * *

><p>It took them three days to get a list with all the people who had died in the last seventy years that were in one way or another Riddle's fault.<p>

Then it took them two days more and a lot of creativity to think of at least forty possible outcomes of the ritual and the rearrange of time. Some of those possibilities were awesome, almost utopic, others were horrible, almost apocalyptic, and obviously there were many in between.

They had taken Bill's apartment as their headquarters and the dining room had become their research office. They had started to eat in the kitchen –when Hermione remember they had to eat and insisted until they agreed-so they didn't mess up their hard work, and they ate standing and without tasting the food anymore, all of them eager to return to the research.

At the end of the week the walls were completely covered with papers, some stating possible futures, others listing dead people, some were about the ritual and others were about the spell to merge the memories.

They had discovered one thing in their research and didn't know how to fix it. The last casters hadn't gone mad because of the relatively short amount of time they had to take in their brains, but they didn't have such luck, they would have the memories about all their lives to sort out without going mad.

Harry sighed and closed yet another book of mind arts, rubbing his face with his free hand, before running his fingers through his hair in an impatient gesture.

He almost threw the book against the wall but managed at the last time possible to just let it fall on the table. He stood up and shook his head slightly trying to fully wake up.

"I'm leaving" Harry told Bill and Hermione, who had been following his movements with their tired gaze.

"Where are you going?" Hermione asked worried, Harry wasn't giving up now, was he?

"I'm going to Grimmauld Place, to see if I can find anything in that library" Harry answered, giving them a small and fleeting strained smile.

"I think I will go to the library again, maybe I will find something…" Hermione said, not really convinced but willing to try again and maybe she would be lucky, after all she was going to the Ancient Library of Alexandria that was hidden in the magical part of Alexandria, not far from Bill's flat.

* * *

><p>Two days passed and Bill was about ready to climb the walls in his desperation. Harry had gone and hadn't come back. Hermione had come back almost a day later empty handed and without luck and had promptly fallen asleep in what had been a big armchair and now was a queen sized bed.<p>

Bill had already sent Neuth, his hawk, which hadn't come back yet, and had tried to fire-call Grimmauld Place but no one had answered and he couldn't go through the floo because it was too bloody far away. He didn't want to spend magic doing a portkey because they may need it to do the ritual. And only Harry bloody Potter had enough power to travel back and forth between Egypt and London without making a dent to his magic reserves.

So he was pretty much stuck in there, with a sleeping Hermione and without news of Harry and nothing else to do.

Seeing as he wouldn't be able to do anything else since Hermione surely had inspected every bookshelf in the magical library of Alexandria, being as persistent as she was, he didn't have any books in his apartment that he hadn't read and Harry didn't show any sing of coming back, Bill decided to take a Calming Draught –or else he wouldn't sleep a wink- and go to rest.

However it was not meant to be, because one hour and half after he had gone to bed a loud crack was heard in the apartment followed by the sound of someone shouting Hermione's and his name.

Hermione shouted a little at Harry about being too loud and a disappearing without telling them that he would be away for so bloody long. Harry then shouted something that seemed to silence their friend.

Bill groaned and sank lower in his bed, trying to hide beneath the covers and pushing the pillow over his head to muffle the noise.

Loud, fast steps were then heard going to the dining room, then to the kitchen and back to the living room. Not two minutes later the door of his bedroom was hastily opened.

"Bill! I found it!" Harry almost screamed happily and Bill groaned in response.

"Go away, Harry" He tried to say but it sounded more like 'gu way, hawy', the Calming Draught and his own sleep leaving him way too sleepy and dazed to pay attention.

"Oh" Harry said, sounding sheepish and Bill almost felt tempted to lift the pillow to look at him, it had been ages since Harry had sound so innocent and carefree. "I will be working on this in the dining room with Hermione, you can go back to sleep" Said Harry and then left as quickly as he came. He must have done something about the noise too because from then on Bill didn't heard anything outside of his room or maybe he was too tired to listen to them as he drifted back to sleep, he didn't know and he didn't really care.

Bill woke up six hours later, grabbed a towel and made a beeline to the bathroom in a zombie like manner. He certainly hadn't gotten enough hours of sleep for him to be ready to jump out of bed as he always did when he was younger.

He caught a glimpse of Harry and Hermione through the door of the dining room but they were apparently too focused reading something and chatting about it because they didn't seem to notice Bill making his way to the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later Bill was almost ready to start reading dusty old books again, he just needed a cup of coffee to fully wake up.

As soon as he stepped into the dining room with the intention to go to the kitchen, however, he was stopped by Harry.

"Bill! Finally!" said Harry with a big grin on his face that was mirrored by Hermione. "Come on, sit down, I solved part of our problem" He said enthusiastically.

"Can I have a cup of coffee before you start?" Bill asked already making his way to his chair.

"Here, you can have mine" Harry said pouring more coffee in his cup right after casting a silent scourgify on it.

Bill took a sip and grimaced before casting a warming charm on the coffee, and then he nodded at them, silently telling him he could start talking now.

"I was in Grimmauld Place going through all the books I could find about the mind arts and all the related arts when I remembered something I had read in another book at my house." Harry passed him a book and pointed at one of the titles. "It's a spell used to put the patients that had been hit with mild memory charms in a sort of healing coma. As those memory charms don't block the memory as tightly as the oblivate, but instead just lightly block certain parts of your memory, they can be easily reversed. The healers made this spell to help the mind in the process when the parts blocked are too big." Said Harry and Bill couldn't help but be surprised and impressed, he didn't think he could have made a connection like that to find that spell. He glanced at Hermione and saw that she was also impressed by the connection Harry had made, even though she already knew about it.

"So we just have to use that spell after the other one and everything will be fine?" Bill just had to ask, he couldn't believe it was so easy.

"Yeah, or something like that" said Harry and his answered made Bill frown.

"What do you meant?"

"Nothing, it's just that I have been working trying to merge both spells so we won't have to remember lots of spells, we could make a mistake with the ritual and we can't afford that" said Harry and that's when Bill noticed all the runes that were written in Harry's notebook.

Bill stared at the sheet of paper amazed and slightly shocked for a few minutes until he remembered that Harry worked doing that kind of thing, merging spells to create new ones, rediscovering old ones and creating new from scratch for the injured. And then he just had to smile, despite the serious situation they were in, because he still remembered the almost lazy teenager that used to prefer playing quidditch with his brother rather than study with his other friend.

"How long do you think it will take you?" Bill asked then, knowing that Harry was right; they would need all the help they could get with the spells nonrelated to the ritual because the ritual was really hard all of its own.

"If I concentrate in this and don't distract myself with other things… it could take me from two days to one week" said Harry, a thoughtful look on his face. "You would have to prepare everything for the ritual on your own…" he said making a face at the idea of not participating in that part of the ritual.

Bill nodded and was just about to tell Harry there wouldn't be any troubles when Hermione, who had been frowning since a couple of minutes ago, spoke. "Wait! Didn't you just say that the spell would put us in a coma? What about Riddle then?" asked Hermione clearly alarmed at the idea of Riddle escaping while they were unconscious.

Harry stayed silent for a moment and then swore out loud. "Shit! I hadn't thought about that" muttered Harry, eyeing his notebook for a minute before lifting his head and looking at them. "But I haven't found any spell that will do what this does without putting us in a coma. In fact the mind needs that time to get used to the new memories and possible changes in your psyche."

"We cannot risk Riddle running away before we can do something about him" Said Bill scornfully.

"But there is no spell that can make the merging of the memories less dangerous while keeping us awake! Not unless I make one from scratch and that will take me at least a month." Harry exclaimed, knowing that it could very well take him at least three or four months to design a spell like that from scratch.

"Well, then we will have to make sure that he doesn't run away from us" Hermione perked up, a small smile starting to form in her face at some random idea that popped up in her mind..

"And what do you suggest?" Harry turned to look at her interested.

"You leave that to me, I've come across a couple of traps working at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. I'll just have to make sure to choose one from the storage that won't open from the inside… and maybe I can add a couple of charms to make sure he won't escape. And before you start worrying about the magic from it messing up with the ritual, Bill and I will make sure it works without altering anything." Hermione answered with such a big grin that was almost creepy.

If Harry had been someone else he would have shivered when faced with that smile coming from Hermione. After facing Voldemort and lots of Death Eaters, however, that almost creepy grin just left him shaking his head somewhat amused.

* * *

><p>Two weeks and one day later they were ready to do the ritual.<p>

While Harry had been working on the spell to merge the memories and put them both to sleep until the memories were sorted out, Hermione had gone to the Ministry and had come back with a really big cage –surely used to move magical animals illegally- and started muttering something about what charms she would add to it. Bill having more experience with rituals and spells in ancient Egyptian had redrawn the ritual circle in the cavern and helped to put the cage once Hermione was done with it.

Harry hadn't bothered to find anything about the cage while he had been working on the spell and when he got to the chamber he didn't need to ask because the metal cell that hung over the ritual circle was self-explanatory.

"And how are you going to make sure he doesn't free himself?" was the only thing that Harry asked.

"I borrowed a couple of books from the Ministry about the charms and wards they apply to the temporary holding cells, and they use such useful magic suppressing wards" Hermione winked at him and Harry smiled.

"Ok, then, let's do this" Harry walked around the ritual circle until he was on the north symbol, Hermione positioned herself in the magic symbol a little to the right and Bill copied Harry's movements until he was standing in the south symbol.

Harry put the pieces of Voldemort's wand in the line that connected his round symbol with the ritual circle and then nodded at them.

"On the count of three." Said Bill and Harry took a deep breath to prepare himself. " One. Two. Three" Bill shot Harry the altered memory merge spell at the same time that Harry shot Hermione and she did the same with Bill as her target, the blue light connecting with the targeted people's chest with seconds of difference.

They hold their breath for a couple of minutes waiting for something to happen, and all of them relaxed when nothing occurred –because nothing was supposed to happen yet-.

"Are you ready?" Bill asked them.

Hermione nodded shakily, taking deep breaths trying to stay calm.

"Are you?" Harry asked back with a strained smile that looked more like a grimace.

"As ready as I'll ever be" answered Bill with as much confidence as he could muster.

Harry took another deep breath and made a silent count down with his fingers that his friends followed with their eyes. When he got to the zero the three of them started chanting the words of the ritual.

* * *

><p>R&amp;R, please.<p>

Thank you very much for the correction, Sachita n.n


	2. Chapter 2

**2. Waking up.**

_January 25, 2006, 7am._

_Cavern somewhere in Alexandria, Egypt._

Bill was the first one to woke up. He opened his eyes slowly, a low groan escaping from his mouth, feeling his brain pulsing inside his head and a nasty headache on top of that. The headache was so strong it was making him nauseous, that's how bad he was feeling.

He rolled on the floor and tried to force his body into a sitting position, it wouldn't do to puke all over himself, but all he managed was to find himself on all fours on shaking limbs before they gave in and he fell face-first to the floor.

That's when his brain stared to work again, and he remembered, oh what he remembered! The memory merge had been successful, he could tell, since he had all the memories of his 'other self' swirling inside his mind, showing him things that hadn't happened in the other timeline.

Bill stayed in the floor for a long time assessing the new memories.

First of all he searched in his newest memories to make sure everyone was safe and sound. Once he made sure that they were he keep analyzing the other memories.

Most of it was the same, but there were lots of memories with his uncles, memories of the couple of twins -his brothers and his uncles- playing pranks in all the family meetings, how it was his uncles that helped the twins to open his business instead of Harry and other unimportant details like those.

And then he noticed the worst thing that had happen on this world, or rather what hadn't happen, he had never met Fleur. He didn't know her. Instead, he was in an on and off relationship with an old friend from Hogwarts.

He would have to do something about that...

He heard a small muffled groan coming from the inside of the cell.

He would have to do something about his love life _after_ he got rid of Riddle.

But first he had to see how Hermione and Harry were coping.

He tried to sit down just to fell once more to the floor.

"Damn it" he muttered, just what he needed, to reach a level of magical exhaustion that it had drained even his normal energy. He couldn't even remember the last time something like that had happen, maybe when he was allowed to use magic outside school for the first time when he was seventeen, he had been so excited about it. Being in bed for a week afterwards had taught him to be more careful.

Another groan, this time coming from Hermione's place, took him from his memories, ones he had lived in both worlds.

"Oh my god, my head" she muttered moving her hand to the aforementioned part of her body, feeling her eyes filling with tears at the pain and some of the new memories.

It turns out her grandparents had died in an attack commanded by Voldemort in their original timeline, in this one they were alive and living a couple of blocks away from her parent's house.

The new timeline had a mayor flaw, though; she never got to be friends with Harry and Ron. She kept behaving the same way she had those first days in their first year, lacking a frightening experience with a troll and a dangerous adventure to bring her courage out of her and make her realize that books weren't everything in life; as a consequence she had never befriended anyone, no one that mattered at least. Right now her other self was working in an unassuming position in the ministry just going on living and behaving like an insufferable know-it-all with bad character.

Gone was her good position working at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Gone were her good friends. Gone were her awards at Hogwarts for helping save the school time and again.

Everything was gone. And she was just another bothersome muggleborn cast away by the purebloods to some obscure part of the ministry to keep doing paperwork for the rest of her life.

Well, she was having none of that. She would get everything back, starting by her best friends.

She tried to sit up to analyze her current situation and found that it was an impossible feat as of now, her body was too tired to move something that wasn't her arms or her head.

Hermione heard Bill chuckled and turned her head to the side to glare at him. "What's so funny? Can _you_ move?" she asked and he stopped laughing.

"No, I can't, but it's funnier when you see someone else failing at it" he answered cheekily, too happy to care about her glare, he had his family back and it was just a matter of time getting Fleur back too.

Hermione snorted and nodded reluctantly, it was somewhat funny to see Bill all sprawled in the floor but not able to put himself in a more comfortable position.

"How is your life?" she asked after a while, growing bored of being in the same position without any entertainment.

"It has some changes, but nothing mayor, just more relatives alive. I've never met Fleur, though." Bill told her and she gave him a knowing look.

"I never talked to Harry or Ron. We almost don't know each other" she said sadly. "Well, I don't doubt that Harry knows me and remembers me, but we didn't grow together like before" she shook her head trying to get rid of such horrid thoughts, she would get everything back.

"Do you already know what are we going to do with him?" Bill changed the subject not so swiftly.

"We can't just kill him and be done with it, Bill" she scolded him, knowing exactly what he was thinking.

"I know, you two don't want to and won't let me do it, that's why I'm asking if you have already thought about it" he said raising an eyebrow at her, silently telling her what he thought about they refusal.

"I don't know, I suppose we could do what they did the second time and take him in" she reluctantly muttered, not to low so that he could hear.

"And who is going to take him in? Will you do it? Because I'm not doing it" Bill rebutted and when Hermione failed to answer both fell silent.

Bill managed to stand up for the first time one hour later and found himself facing a completely knocked out Harry Potter lying still on the floor and an unconscious teenager version of Tom Malvoro Riddle, who had only moved a little before falling senseless.

He sighed, briefly wondering why they couldn't just kill the damn excuse of human being and be done with it.

"Harry hasn't woken up yet" he said to Hermione as he walked towards her, just in case she hadn't noticed before.

"I think his life has too many changes for him to accept it, so he has fallen into a deeper coma to deal with it. If he doesn't wake up in an hour or so we can take him to a hospital" she proposed and took the hand Bill offered to help her stand.

"Should we move him?" Bill frowned, looking down at his friend worried about whatever that could make him react so badly to the memory merge, technically he had more years to process and yet he had woken up first.

"Wh-where am I?" Riddle demanded to know from his cell, after clearing his dry throat. Hermione and Bill turned towards him so fast they were both dizzy for a few seconds, their energy levels still low. "Who are you? What's going on?" He asked, eyes narrowing in what he must have thought to be a threatening glare.

Bill found it hard not to laugh. He had encountered Fenrir Greyback, Lord Voldemort and dozens of Death Eaters and this... this teenager thought he would be scared by a glare like that? Severus Snape's was a thousand times more frightening.

"What are we going to do with him now, Bill?" she asked, a small frown forming on her face, she hadn't thought that much ahead, concentrating mainly in making the ritual work, and not screwing up the spells cast on the cage.

"You are not actually asking _me_ that" Bill stated, refusing to even think about it, because if he did he would only convince himself that killing the boy was the only option available.

"What are you talking about!? Who are you!?" Riddle shouted, grabbing the bars of his cell and looking around wildly, trying to find a way to escape.

Hermione Granger could be many things, but never let it be said that she was cold hearted.

"We are not going to hurt you, Tom" she told the adolescent with an almost kind –if somewhat forced- smile.

"Don't call me that, you have no right to call me by my name, you_ sick mudblood_" the teen spat out.

The adults' eyes bugged at the words, and then they looked at each other feeling as utterly astonished as if Harry had suddenly declared that he would love to wear a dress. Had that little boy said… It couldn't be, the ritual specified that it would bring the summoned from a time where it was still innocent, not yet corrupted. How was that _not_ corrupted?

Bill whirled around and went to a table that was near one of the walls, opening the papyrus that were there to start re-checking everything while Hermione started circling the ritual circle, looking for something wrong with the hieroglyphs or with the lines that she already knew like the back of her hand and calling out to Bill the runes and hieroglyphs so he could check with the written ones.

"Do you think the cage disrupted the magic? Maybe the magic we cast on it affected the natural flow of magic from the ritual…" Hermione mussed out loud once she had finished circling the whole diagram and Bill hummed.

"It could be that, it could be..." he muttered, comparing his perfect –and several times already checked- notes with the old papyrus, perhaps he had made a mistake somewhere and copied wrong the order of the hieroglyphs and then passed that mistake on to the real ritual circle drawn on the floor.

"Let me out of here" Riddle hissed, tired of their mussing when he couldn't understand what they were talking about, what the hell were they talking about? Could magic really be disrupted? And what was the natural flow of magic? Why had he never heard of such things? Why did they know about it when they didn't look old enough to have mastered any subject?

"Shut up, Riddle" the red-headed snapped.

"Let me out!" the teen screamed this time and he would have been silenced had they not been so magically depleted.

"I cannot find anything here, Bill" Hermione said after walking twice more around the circle.

"I want to go! Open this thing!" Tom kept shouting.

"Me neither, but that may be because of the nuisance, or maybe because my massive headache, I'm not sure" he said dryly, raising a brow at her.

The younger woman glared at him and then turned to look at Harry. "We should take him to your apartment; lay him down somewhere more comfortable."

"And sleep, we need to sleep" Bill agreed.

"Wait! You can't just leave me here!" teenage Riddle screamed, trying to shake the bars or move ones that were part of the door, utterly failing at it.

Bill smirked evilly –and more than a bit smug- at him, "Oh, yes, we can" he said and then moved to help Hermione lift the dead weight that was their other friend to the other room where a portkey that would take them to his apartment was waiting for them.

The man couldn't help but thank to every god he could remember that his other-self had chosen the same one.

* * *

><p>Harry awoke to a really dark and quiet apartment, Bill's, he was sure.<p>

It took him a while to order his memories since they kept coming at him –almost relentlessly attacking his mind- not letting him think clearly.

When he found his mind to be somewhat tranquil again, surprise overtook him.

He had known that his life would have been different had Voldemort not killed his parents, but this… the life his other-self had lived… it just left him speechless. And that wasn't a problem he was used to encounter.

His other-self had his own personality traits, some very different from his and other very similar, but the differences were there and that was what he noticed the most. The never-ending happiness the other Harry had experienced, the freedom from an established destiny, the confidence only caring parents could build, the unconditional support from parents, uncles and loyal friends.

He had basically killed the other Harry and took his place, memory merge aside, and he wasn't sure he would be able to adapt to the position he was taking. There were so many differences it wasn't even worth it to try.

"I knew I should have said no" he muttered, throwing one arm over his eyes and wondering if he wouldn't feel too much guilt if he decided to run away from England.

And he hadn't thought about Riddle yet.

"Oh, shit!" Harry sat straight suddenly, where was Riddle?

Harry quickly got up, thinking about Bill's murderous inclination towards Riddle, and checked the whole apartment for any sign of the man they had summoned. Was it even a man what they had summoned? Maybe it was just a little kid, the ritual was supposed to take Riddle from his timeline in a moment when he was still innocent and he doubted the man could have had any innocence on him after his eleventh birthday.

His search only led his to Bill's occupied bedroom, where Hermione was sleeping in the man's bed while the older man was just as sleep on a conjured mattress since Harry had taken the couch-turned-queen-size-bed that was on the living room.

Trying to make as little noise as possible he exited the room and went to the kitchen, where he made something for him and his friends just in case they woke up hungry.

It was as he was enjoying his first peaceful lunch in weeks that he started thinking about Riddle again. Had anyone thought about feeding him? He hadn't found him in the apartment; did that mean he was still on the cage? How long had he been there?

Taking his wand from the hostler on his arm he casted a quiet tempus that told him something he already suspected, two days had passed since the ritual.

And since he had only woke up now and Hermione and Bill were still sleeping that meant that they had been unconscious for part of the first day, if not the whole first day, before his friends woke up and took him to Bill's apartment.

Obviously, that meant nobody had feed Tom Riddle in two whole days since they brought him to the present, that is, if the man, kid, whatever, was still alive and Bill hadn't killed him as soon as he had woken up.

"Well, that just won't do" he said tiredly, putting some food on a plate, grabbing a knife, a fork and a glass he filled with pumpkin juice. He left the tray over the table and then, after a little muttered spell that would prevent everything from falling over, Harry appeared to the ritual cavern.

Just as he had thought, there was Riddle, who looked as if he was starving but was trying to ignore that in favor of looking for some way to escape the little prison.

What surprised Harry, though, was the age. Riddle didn't look as if he had one single innocent hair in his head.

"Let me… " the boy coughed, his throat so dry it hurt him to even swallow "out of he-here" he coughed again and Harry couldn't help to feel guilt. Then the boy lifted his head and realized he was the only one he hadn't spoken to, the one who apparently had too many changes in his life to accept it, whatever that meant.

Harry shook his head at this. "I'm sorry, but I cannot let you go until we decide what we are going to do with you." Harry informed the teen, who glowered at this "I can, however, give you something to eat" he offered and pointing his wand at the inside of the cage he shot a spell that made the tray appear there from Bill's kitchen, the same nifty spell he used on his notebook and pen to be able to have it at hand at all times.

Notebook and pen that he had never bought in this altered reality; if his memories served right when he had finally decided to move from his parents' house he had rented an apartment with Ron in London, close to the Ministry, so in this reality he didn't even have his own apartment, nor all the things he had gone through so many pains to obtain, his books, papyrus, old Celt documents.

"Shite…" escaped his lips when he realized that all the work he had done in the last seven years was gone, didn't exist, hadn't even been thought of by the other Harry, not even in his wildest dreams. He raised one hand to rub at his tired eyes and ruffle his hair a bit, he was still too tired to deal with so many changes… he frowned and brought his other hand to his hair when he noticed that even that was different, he had never let his hair grow so long before… and he didn't have his glasses on, he hadn't noticed before because he could see everything just as well as he did with his glasses on, but they weren't on his face.

A distant memory of going to an appointment at San Mungo's with his mother to get his eyes fixed magically came to his mind, followed by a weary sigh as he let down his hands again, leaving his hair and lack of glasses alone for the moment.

He raised his eyes to look at a suspicious Tom Riddle who was looking from his food to him and then to his food again.

"It's not poisoned, I promised" Harry tried to sound as sincere as he could while feeling so disoriented with himself and everything that was going on.

"Why should I believe you?" asked Tom crossing his arms in front of his chest and raising an eyebrow in a show of defiance and wariness, even though he was dying to eat everything that was on that tray and ask for more if he could, because that meager amount of food wouldn't fill his stomach after two days without food.

Sighing yet again Harry walked to the cage and sat down as close as he could to the tray and Tom. "If I try a bit of everything that is on the tray, will you eat it?" he asked looking up at Tom's frowning face.

The teen had a moment of hesitation; however it seemed that his hunger had weighted him down enough in the last two days for him to agree with a minimum amount of suspicion and reticence in a shorter period of time than Harry would've expected.

Tom sat on the other side of the tray and waited for Harry to try a bit of something before he grabbed that and ate it.

"Why are you doing all this?" asked the teen in between bites, his eyes fixed on Harry as he waited for an answer that he didn't actually expect to come, taking into account the refusal of the other two to answer him.

Harry looked up from the tray where he had been about to grab the glass of pumpkin juice, it wasn't such an unexpected question, in fact It's the same he would be asking should their roles be reversed, he didn't expect, however, to feel a slight proving on his mind as soon as his eyes met Tom's.

While it was amazing that a thirteen year old had already dabbled with the mind arts, Harry wasn't really eager to let the kid know everything he did now, so he quickly tore his eyes away and try to put up as many of his mental barriers as he could –not many, occlumancy wasn't an art he had taken any interest in-.

"You know about legilimancy" said Tom after a couple of minutes of silence, in which Harry had tried to fortify his mind as much as he could with his awful abilities on the subject and his tiredness.

As pissed off as Tom was with the whole situation he also had to admit that he had never met anyone, outside some of his teachers at Hogwarts, who seemed as fascinating and intelligent as the three who had kidnapped him, and even then he had never even heard one of his teachers say anything about the natural flow of magic and a possible disruption of it, that was the kind of knowledge he had tried to harness while studying at Hogwarts but there weren't any advanced magic theory books in the library, not even in the restricted section. These people looked young, younger than all his teachers, and yet they spoke of complex magical theories and were able to at least spot the use of the mind arts. They also seemed to have kidnapped him through a very complicated ritual that involved hieroglyphs, runes and who knows what else… and let's not forget about the cage he was in that somehow blocked his magic. One magical feat after another. They must be prodigies, just like himself, or at the very least very intelligent and resourceful people.

"I do know about it, however I'm not capable of it, I decided against studying it," said Harry, staring at Tom in the eye, sure that he would be able to feel and even perhaps repel another intrusion to his mind. "I refuse to violate another person's privacy just to satisfy my curiosity"

"But you have to admit, it is quite useful" retorted Tom, quite curious as to why someone would reject such a valuable skill, specially someone as powerful and clever as this wizard in front of him seemed to be, he had to realize the benefits of the mind arts. Tom's face was still set on a frown; yet his eyes seemed to be gleaming with a light Harry hadn't noticed on them before.

"There are other ways to find out the truth, should it be needed, that do not meddle with people's minds. Veritarserum, for instance" countered Harry, placing the pumpkin juice once more in the tray after taking a sip of it, leaning back and holding his weight on his hands, it had been quite a while since he had last had to sit on the floor and he had forgotten it was quite uncomfortable.

"Veritaserum… liquid truth. I was not aware of the existence of that kind if potion" Tom's face smothered his frown as impassiveness took its place, he was quite sure that there was no such potion, he would have heard of it before, he would have already got it, just in case he needed it, he was a slytherin after all, it's always better to be prepared than sorry.

"You wouldn't, I don't think it was invented until 1950, at the very least" Harry answered, enjoying perhaps too much the slight widening of Tom's eyes and the minute twitch on his jaw, surely stopping his mouth from opening to show his surprise.

The teen's eyes narrowed as he stared at the adult in front of him. There was absolutely no way that man was implying what he thought he was implying, such a thing wasn't possible, or at least shouldn't be possible, and yet as he took into the other wizard's clothes and remembered the other wizard's and witch's weird clothes and mannerisms –a respectable witch would have never acted the way that woman had and yet the man hadn't thought there was anything wrong about it-.

"Prove it" defied Tom, half expecting the other wizard to admit that it was all a very screwed up joke, and half hoping that the man was telling the truth. It would be such a wonderful thing, to suddenly wake up in the future, where lots of advances had already been made, numerous new theories and spells must have been discovered or created… if one were to ignore that he was waiting for the answer sitting inside of a magical suppressing cage in the middle of Merlin knows where. Kind of difficult thing to ignore, from where he was sitting.

"Sure" Harry took out his wand, shifting his posture to hold his weight with one hand, and waved the piece of wood "_Tempus._"

'_January 26, 2006, 10am.'_ The words formed in the air, floating in front of Tom's blank face.

* * *

><p>Hello!<p>

Sorry for the delay... college was a b*tch this year, an absolute, vindictive b*tch, the one who lied to me and told me that computer engineering wasn't as difficult as everyone said it was... nevermind -.-'

So... just so you know, I don't like this chapter. Everytime I read it I feel like I was really sleep deprived and drinking too much coffee when I wrote all this, but I can't find anything to change that will stop making me feel that way (maybe because I know I was sleep deprived and on my third cup of cappuccino when I wrote most of this chapter). However, since I refuse to erase the whole chapter to write something that makes more sense, this is the chapter you get, because this is the chapter Fanfiction deserves, but not the one it needs right now (I'm still sleep deprived and drinking too much coffee, two weeks later, in case you didn't notice).

I hope you enjoyed it!

R&R, please n.n

See ya,

Kar


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